Plants erect in small green to yellow-green tufts, to 1.5 cm high. Leaves erect spreading when moist but appressed or crispate when dry, lanceolate and broadest near the base, with acute to blunt apices, to 3 mm long, 3–4: 1. Median laminal cells isodiametric with rounded lumens, thick walled with strong corner thickening, to 14 µm wide, with 1–2 papillae on each surface. Basal marginal cells resembling the median cells in both shape and papillosity. Basal juxtacostal cells mostly smooth, short rectangular, 2–3: 1, with straight lateral walls. Margins recurved from base to near the apex, entire or papillose crenate. Costa ending within about ten cells of apex, lying in a sharply defined abaxial keel. Costa cross-section essentially homogeneous, mostly 3 cells thick, and 6–8 cells wide along the abaxial perimeter. Axillary hairs to 6 cells long but with the centrally inserted ones shorter, to 150 µm, with one basal brown cell, not offset from leaf insertion. Rhizoids mostly near base of plant, smooth, red-brown, to 10 µm in diameter at base, repeatedly branched. Stem cross-section without a central strand, with somewhat pachydermous and hyaline inner corticals and with 1–2 layers of strongly pachydermous, red brown outer cortical cells.
Autoicous with perigonia in leaf axils near the perichaetia or on the apices of separate short branches. Perichaetia terminal with bracts smaller than vegetative leaves. Capsule exserted on a yellow to yellow brown, smooth and erect seta of 4–5 mm in length. Urn orange-brown, to 2.5 mm long, about 3: 1, erect, strongly sulcate with eight ribs, lightly to strongly strangulate. Operculum conic-apiculate. Annulus well-defined, revoluble. Exothecial cells in cross-section bistratose with only the outer walls of the outer layer thickened. Exothecial cells at capsule mouth strongly reddened, to 12 µm long, isodiametric to transversely elongate with rounded lumens in up to 4 rows. Exothecial cells at middle of urn quadrate to rectangular, 1–1.5: 1, to 20 µm broad, very thick walled on ridges of capsule with lumen: wall ratio 0.25–1: 1, thinner walled in valleys of the sulcate capsule. Stomata mostly on proximal 1/3 of urn, cryptoporous, only partially obscured by subsidiary cells. Exostome teeth tardily reflexed when dry and old, initially fused in pairs but later separating, pale to almost white, to 200 µm long, finely and densely papillose. Endostome segments mostly 8, sometimes 16, as long as exostome, smooth to very lightly papillose, arising from only one row of cells. Calyptra campanulate and ridged plicate, with cells lacking papillae or prorae, sparsely to rather densely clothed with multiseriate hairs. Ridges on calyptra in cross-section each consisting of clusters of 8 or more cells. Hairs of calyptra distally uniseriate and coronate papillose but proro-papillose below without true papillae over lumens. Spores green, to 16 µm, rather coarsely papillose.